The NBA isn’t truly back until a Lakers opponent crashes out over free throws and, boy, are we so back.
On Sunday, Austin Reaves poured in a career-high 51 points to lead the shorthanded Lakers past the Kings
in Sacramento. It was a remarkable performance from Reaves, who only continues to improve every year in the league.
It was also a performance and game in which the Lakers took many free throws. LA shot 46 freebies on the night with 22 of them coming from Reaves. Naturally, the Sacramento players and head coach Doug Christie had a very normal response to this.
You’re right. They absolutely did not.
Interestingly, DeMar has had three separate games in his career in which he shot over 20 free throws. I’d be curious if he felt the same way about the officiating and free throws in that game as he did on Sunday.
I mean, with this much uproar from the Kings, it’d probably be tough to find any clips of them committing really dumb fouls on consecutive possessions or something like that, right?
Anyone who watched the game on Sunday could pretty clearly see that the Kings were committing some of the dumbest fouls you’ll ever see throughout the game. Is Reaves a foul grifter? Yes. But it’s pretty easy to get to the line when Sacramento is fouling him before he even dribbles the ball on the other end of the court.
It’s also always pretty easy to actually look into the box score and see why one team got free throws and one didn’t. The Lakers did not shoot the three well or frequently on Sunday, finishing with just eight makes on 25 attempts.
Sacramento, meanwhile, connected on 18 of its 43 attempts from range. Wouldn’t you know it, but the team that isn’t taking threes and, instead, driving to the rim is getting more free throw attempts while the team shooting from the perimeter isn’t getting fouled.
Crazy how that always works out.
Now, it wasn’t all of the Kings who were crashing out, to be fair. Both Zach LaVine and Dennis Schröder, a former teammate of Reaves, had nice things to say about Reaves postgame as well as critiques of their fouling.
Few things are more enjoyable than Lakers opponents losing their minds over free throws. Unfortunately, this won’t rank among the best crashouts — an honor still reserved for Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković — but this does mean that the NBA season is truly back.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
